


Pantheons

by soothsayerlee



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Chinese Mythology & Folklore, How Do I Tag, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Multi, Mythology References, References to Norse Religion & Lore, because madwife is too cute, follows the book but includes tv show lores
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21997951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soothsayerlee/pseuds/soothsayerlee
Summary: Jia—she went by Jia now, the name decidedly more inconspicuous than her previous ones—wasn’t sure what to make of Grimnir when she answered the door, but it sure wasn’t good news. Grimnir doesn’t bring news of peace and truce, he never does. He is a warbringer and war it was that he will bring upon the Pantheon. Promises of glory, of victory, and of praises were made. Grimnir had always been a wordsmith, his tongue as sleek as it is poisonous. Naturally, she didn’t buy a word of his bullshit.
Relationships: Laura Moon & Shadow Moon, Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney, Original Female Character/Original Male Character, The Jinn | Ifrit/Salim (American Gods)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. before the storm

GODS ARE LONESOME CREATURES, forever cursed to wander the world. They too are cruel, the worst manifestation of the human mind and nature. And they are dying. Quick.

Jia—she went by Jia now, the name decidedly more inconspicuous than her previous ones—wasn't sure what to make of Grimnir when she answered her door that one stormy night, but it sure wasn't good news. Grimnir doesn't bring news of peace nor truce, he never does. He is a war god, a warbringer, and war it was that he would bring upon the Pantheon.

He went by Wednesday now, as the day was named after him. Jia found it humorous that he, too, visited her on a Wednesday, deliberate or not she didn't want to know. All that mattered was that Grimnir was on the back room of their pharmacy, sitting across her with two cups of herbal tea between them. Thin white tendrils of steam rose into the cool air.

Promises of glory, of victory, and of praises was made. Jia would be lying if she said that she had not been tempted by his offer. She had stories, fairy-tale books for children telling of her tale, not to mention the Fall Festival. She, as well as other members of her family, could be considered the lucky one, while there were others who strived on odd jobs to survive. He reminded her of the olden days, when she was—they were—worshipped and honoured, as gods should be. Nowadays, worship came in the form of annual moon cakes and wolf whistles along the streets.

His brother was the supposed Liesmith, yet Grimnir's tongue was as sleek as it was poisonous. So naturally, she didn't buy a word of his bullshit.

Rain pattered against the window.

_Pit-a-pat. Pit. Pat._

Jia turned down his offer.

Grimnir persisted.

America was a bad place for a god. It was a godless land once, and it is quickly turning into one again. Her Pantheon was a thriving one in her native country, their palace was of gold and their clothes spun out of silk. Here, home was a bed with sunken mattress with yellowed ceilings. She had read on the news, that they had sent a spacecraft by her name. Not one, not two, but three. Three spacecraft to land on the moon, in honour of her name. It was a grand feat, she admitted. Here, it would take a miracle for someone to write down her real name.

She took a sip of her tea, watching the man before her attempted to down the entire cup. Attempted. A splatter of tea spilled onto the table. A scowl tainted her lips.  
Jia went to fetch a napkin. Thunder rumbled in the distance and, from the corner of her eyes, she saw Grimnir tracing patterns on the table, as a child would to fog condensed on a window. A fleeting image, so swift she thought she’d seen double visions. Jia swivelled towards him and Grimnir was leaning back on his seat, a smile on his face.

He told her to sit down, and she did, as much as she wanted to kick him out of that seat. Not a single protest tumbled from her mouth, even as he proposed his obnoxious ideas, again. She wouldn’t know why, or how exactly, but that was the way it was. Even as she woke up to bright sunshine and birds chirping by her window the next day, she didn’t suspect any foul play involved. Not a single moment of doubt.

_(Grimnir was special like that.)_

The night ended with Grimnir driving through the downpour on his porsche, Betty, and Jia staring down at a piece of crumpled paper in her hand. Jolted down on it with perfect cursive handwriting was a place.

_House on the Rock, Wisconsin._


	2. heng'e and tyr

WORDS TRAVELLED FAST AROUND THEIR PANTHEON, like forest fire eating away dried bushes during cruel summers (not that there was much of them left. Pan Jinlian was the most recent to go, she’d last heard. Blown her head with a gun stolen from one of her ‘customers’). Apparently Erlang had caught word of a brewing war and was rumoured to have pledged himself to Grimnir’s slowly-but-surely growing army. Jia wasn’t at all shocked to hear of it, even as Guan Yin’s thin, wavering voice spoke to her through the phone. Erlang had been isolated of war and bloodshed since the first time they’d stepped foot upon this accursed land, and decades of nothingness, of feeding off of bedtime stories and mouth-to-mouth tales, had left him starved. Grimnir may have promised him a war, but The Three Eyed saw it as an offering. He was a war god, the battlefield was his altar and the blood of his enemies were sacrifices. War, to him, was worship.

Guan Yin sounded wary, and she had every right to feel so. Grimnir had approached her, paying a visit to her humble in-the-hole tea shop with the proposition in mind. And, as the upholder of peace and kindness, She had turned down his offer, kindly. Guan Yin was one of the more thriving ones, one of the more known ones with the likes of Buddha and Amaterasu—to a certain extent. Worship came easy for them. To them, war was not needed, especially not with the New ones. What they had now was sufficient.

Jia couldn’t help but wish her encounter went as Guan Yin’s did. Instead, she was left with a crumpled piece of paper, a very specific location written down on it, which unsurprisingly, never failed to turn up every time she tossed it to the nearest trash can. It was charmed, no doubt. She let out a frustrated scream at the discovery, granting her questioning looks from unknowing customers. Even Yutu took a peek from their back room, big white ears and rose button nose twitching. “Is something the matter, Jia?”

Jia was glad the counter was tall enough to hide a white talking rabbit standing on its hind legs from mundane customers. She could already imagine the mass hysteria were that to happen.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” she whispered. Everything was going great, except that it wasn’t. She’d been a fool to listen to Grimnir. A complete and utter fool.

“Excuse me?”

The voice dragged her out of her reverie. “Yes?” 

“Yeah—um—hi.” The woman, tall, lean and cheeks flushed from the summer heat, sputtered, as if she’d lost all her perfectly braided words at the sight of her. Jia smiled, satisfied to find that she still had that effect on others. “Can—can I have a word with the pharmacist?”

“That would be me. How can I help you?”

“Erm, you see. I have some questions about...you know...my medications.” Jia nodded, prompting the woman to continue, “I’ve decided to switch my birth control and I was hoping that—you know—” Jia, in fact, didn’t know, “—my menstruation cycle.”

Ah.

“I see,” Jia nodded, smiling. “Please, do elaborate.”

They were both painfully aware of the attention she was gaining. On the corner of her eye, Jia caught a glimpse of a man, shifting uncomfortably on his feet as the woman explained further. She saw the dip of his brows, the flicker of his eyes and the ugly scowl on his youthful face. It was a shame, truly. Centuries of societal evolution and progress yet the unease men developed at the mention of a biological function of the female body had not gone through the same.

Jia had been human, too, once. It had been such a long time ago, but the men were no different than now.

His voice was low and dripping with toxic. “There is a time and place for that gutter talk.”

The woman was red, fuming with anger, mortified at the thought that the man to shame her for this. No shit, mister, this was the place. She exchanged looks with her and Jia, too, was thinking the same. This was the reality they had to live through. This was their life under the patriarchy, branded under the label ‘women’.

Jia raised her voice ever so slightly, loud enough for the man on the aisle to listen. “I would need to see your pills. And about your menstrual cycle for the past three months…”

.  
.  
.

HOUSE ON THE ROCKS, WISCONSIN.

“Sixty years ago, Alex Jordan began to build a house on a high spot of rock in a field he did not even own.  
And even more, he could not have told you why.

And people came to see him build it. The curious and the puzzled, and those who were neither; they could not honestly have told you why they came. So, he did what any sensible American male of his generation would do: he began to charge them money. Nothing much. A nickel. A quarter. And he kept building, and the people kept coming.

So, he took those nickels and quarters and made something even bigger and stranger. He filled the land beneath the house with things for people to see, and they came. Millions of them every year.”

.  
.  
.

JIA READ, AND REREAD and re-reread the words upon the crumpled piece of paper, stained with tea on the far corner. She was a beat too late to realise that it resembled one of Grimnir’s many runes. That pig head never knew when to stop.This was Grimnir they were talking about. He wouldn’t stop until he had an entire pantheon to lead for war.

Premature planning, Jia thought to herself. The New ones were younger, and much stronger than they could ever hope to be. They were entering a gunfight with a knife. And it wasn’t as if Jia didn’t want the Pantheon to return to their former glory, Jia would give anything to live like gods again. But not like this.

This was no holy crusade. This was suicide.

There was something odd about all this. Jia couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more into Grimnir’s grand scheme.

Jia wondered who else he’d been visiting. Amaterasu? Mama-Ji? Perhaps Hel?

A particular name popped into her mind.

That’s right.

He would know.

Jia reached for the telephone—old, beaten and wired—punching in numbers like her life depended on it.

It rang three times before a low voice answered. 

_“Tuesday Law Firm, how can I help you?”_

“Tyr, it’s me.”

There was a heartbeat of silence.

_“...Heng’e?”_

“Jia,” she corrected him.

_“Oh, Jia. What a pleasant surprise—”_

“Tyr. We need to talk,” Jia cut him off. This was no time for dilly-dallies.

_“...Does this involve taking off my clothes like last time?”_

Jia smiled, cheeks dusted pink. “Perhaps,” she leaned back in her seat, biting her lip at the risque thought. “Worship don’t come so easy these days, Mr. Tuesday.”< /p>

_“Not if you’re with me, love.”_

“Ha! Try telling that to Grimnir.”

_“...has he?”_

“Yes. And Guan Yin and Erlang. Probably several others in the East.”

_Tyr grew silent, pondering._

“Something isn’t right.”

_“I can feel that, too. This all seems too altruistic for him.”_

Jia looked over her shoulder, half-expecting to find a pair of ravens, or an oversized dog on her doorstep. She didn’t. A wave of relief washed over her. Grimnir may had lost an eye, but he has eyes and ears all over the place. “Grimnir’s hiding something, I don’t trust him.”

_“You shouldn’t. Costed me a hand.”_

When Jia laughed, it was bitter and nothing short of genuine.

Poor, poor Grimnir.

A pantheon of gods Grimnir may wished for to help him, but all there was was a pantheon who had nothing but vendetta held against him. Serves him right, All-Father or whatnot.

Jia leaned against the nearest wall, twirling her willowy fingers between the wire of the phone. Yet the more she dwelled upon the thought, the more she wavered from her initial scepticism. Yes, Grimnir was not to be trusted, she knew that much, but she did owe him a promise or two. (Desperate times counted for desperate measures, and they had been on their lowest during the Great Depression.)

"Then, I assume that you will not be going to Wisconsin?"

_"Why would I?"_

Jia shrugged, her tone ever-so nonchalant. "See what Grimnir's really up to. Count it as a little family reunion, eh?" Then, she remembered Erlang, tall and handsome and three-eyed, running on rage and impulse and sweet tangerines among the Heavens. Then, bathed in red, licking his sword clean of the blood of his enemies. "Erlang needs someone to talk him out of that shit," she added as an afterthought.

There was an indefinite pause between them, then, a quiet before the storm. It was as if they were waiting for something to happen, or someone…

A crash from the other line.

When Tyr spoke, again, it was hurried, rushed. “I’m afraid I may have to cut this short, love. Come to Illinois, we’ll discuss this matter further. Until then, love.”  
Jia didn’t even have the chance to refute before he hung up.

She scrunched her face in irritation.

“Asshole.”


End file.
